Lev Parnas, a recent addition to the cast of those testifying to Trump's involvement in the Ukraine ... [+]
How could we have sunk to these depths? The Republicans in the Senate have voted down the possibility of calling witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump. If they proceed to acquit him of abuse of power and obstruction of justice, the notion of three co-equal, mutually checking branches of government is at an end. The very fate of American democracy hangs in the balance.
The Senate Republicans want to bring the impeachment proceedings to a close as quickly as possible because they know that, the longer the trial lasts, the greater the likelihood of more slime oozing out of Swamp Trump. After all, if one is known by the company one keeps—as so many of us are taught as children—Trump could hardly be expected to be a drainer of swamps. In view of the number of indicted goons and convicted scammers who have surrounded him all these decades, one could only conclude that he is the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
John Bolton knows this all too well, having decided that riding the tiger as National Security Adviser was preferable to being on the outside, looking in. We now know that Trump asked him in a meeting as early as May 2019 to tell the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to meet with Rudy Giuliani to discuss the terms of the relationship between the two countries (the White House, predictably, denies the meeting happened).
Seeking to defend his country from the Russians, who were killing thousands of his compatriots in a war largely forgotten in the West, Zelensky was desperate for military aid, as well as for public moral support in the form of an invitation to visit the Oval Office. But first, Trump demanded a “favor”–an announcement (though not necessarily the reality) that the Ukrainians were investigating his then-likely presidential election opponent, Vice President Joe Biden.
We know about this “quid pro quo” from the testimony of now-disgraced Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, who testified before the House that “everyone was in the loop” and that the extortion was directed by the president. Accurately assessing the character of the scam in which he was implicated, Bolton christened the campaign a “drug deal” and characterized Giuliani as a “hand grenade” that was going to blow up in their faces.
Worse, and more dangerous for the future of American democracy, is Trump’s complete and unprecedented obstruction of Congress when these events led, finally, to an impeachment investigation. As many people have noted, if the president can simply refuse to cooperate with Congressional requests for documents and witness testimony, we live not in a democracy, which requires that officials be accountable for their actions, but in an autocracy, in which the executive can make decisions without the possibility of oversight by others.
If Trump is able to get away with this corruption of our system of checks and balances, Congress will have lost its authority to hold the chief executive accountable. Having come into existence by rejecting the authority of a monarch and prohibiting the conferral of titles of nobility, we in the United States will have made him a king.
Trump has shown at every step of the way that that is his goal, and that he respects only those world leaders who have more or less unchecked power–Duterte, Erdogan, Xi, above all Vladimir Putin. And he has invited these dictatorial rulers to assist him in achieving his goal by digging up dirt on his political rivals.
What is shocking and depressing is that the effort to transform the presidency into an autocracy is being carried out in the name of a putatively patriotic policy—“America First.” Yet nothing could be further from the solemn pledge of the American founders to defend with their “lives, [their] fortunes, and [their] sacred Honor” the principle that “all men are created equal.”
Trump, of course, gave little to the country other than a diagnosis of bone spurs and a tiresome game show until he was, inexplicably, elected to the highest office in the land. Once having done so, he refused to make public his tax returns, as had by then become standard procedure for elected presidents, and he has refused to divest himself of many of his real estate holdings—thus encouraging favor-seekers to fatten his wallet by staying at his hotels. His possible violations of the Emoluments Clause, which forbid this sort of office profiteering, are being litigated elsewhere.
Yet now that his acquittal by the Senate is all but assured, we must deal with the question of how to constrain King Donald. Polls and off-year elections suggest that he has little chance of winning the popular vote, but, as his election reminded us, that is not how we choose presidents in the United States. Under the circumstances, the inability of the Democrats to determine who will be their standard-bearer is worrisome at best. While they engage in “caucuses” among unrepresentative Midwesterners, Trump barnstorms the country whipping up the fervor of his base.
The American people confront an epochal crossroads: will the country for which their forefathers fought and died remain a democratic republic, or will they stand by and watch it turn into an autocracy?
